Hokusai

Putin is intelligent, no doubt

Russia was a super power with some of the best engineers in the world. Today it needs to use war to keep another Slav country on its side. Even the UK keeps the commonwealth in place even with very diverse countries that used to be forced colonies.

To not have a conscience does not make you intelligent. Russia should be economically and socially way more developed that it currently is. To sell gas is not high tech.

There needs to be liability established for publishing private and personal information;

Europe has the General Data Protection Regulation.

Is not that the nord stream 2 pipeline? Germany was able to buy Russian gas without problem. Why build the new pipe?

It seems that Germany thought that Russia was a rational player interested in growing their economy, but it seems that it was just power play for personal aspirations.

That happened in the Spanish civil war. Guernica famous painting depicts the bombing by Italian and German aviation of the city of Guernica.

The United Kingdom didn't wanted to be part of it, thou.

Ironically, I think that more countries intervention would have make the Spanish war bloodier but it could have stopped World War II.

"Learned helplessness is behavior exhibited by a subject after enduring repeated aversive stimuli beyond their control."

The key part is beyond their control. As a society we are being trained to see software beyond our control. "The algorithm" decides. Many non software engineers fail to see that behind each software decision there is a company that can change it.

Learned helplessness is dangerous even just because improvement becomes impossible when people just accepts software like if it was the physical laws of the universe.

This reminds me of each time people criticises the European Union for "condemning" something. Big organizations do things step by step. First you talk, then you act. Even Russia prepared a prerecorded pantomime of a discussion before acting. This are the gears moving and is no small thing, it sends a message and prepares for the worse.

Americans talk in hyperbole. Average is an insult. Any experience less than life changing is boring.

And most people in other countries are not aware.

I see how much money goes to American companies like Tesla meanwhile European companies like Mercedes-Benz get less investment and no media attention at all, even when they outperform their American counterparts.

We live in the age of the attention economy. I hope that advertising on the web is forbidden and we go back to good products over flashy newspaper press releases. Less memes more information.

Our obligation to enforce crimes against the nation’s financial systems includes both informing the public on how digital assets work and partnering with them to identify, arrest, and prosecute those engaging in crimes involving digital assets. The Secret Service will continue to expand its capabilities, collaboration, and effectiveness related to all financial crimes investigations.

TLDR; it's the end of crypto currency as a refuge for criminals.

So, people will have to pay taxes, register exchange of value between parties, wallets will be trazable to individuals, etc.

Crypto currencies are the new home bubble derivatives. A complex economic vehicle to hide the absurdity of its valuation. A pyramid scheme, a hot potato game. It is bad that we have learned so little from previous crisis.

My understanding fits with the dictionary definition.

megalomania /ˌmɛɡ(ə)lə(ʊ)ˈmeɪnɪə/ noun: megalomania. obsession with the exercise of power. delusion about one's own power or importance (typically as a symptom of manic or paranoid disorder)

can help you get a lot done

That is survivor bias. I have worked with such people and they destroy companies and make employee life miserable. It is impossible to get anything done in the company that does not help the megalomaniac ego. And they usually sabotage efforts that benefit the company but not themselves. It looks cool in movies and from far away, up close it is a train wreck.

Ali is not guilty, marketing is purely scam these days, he is just following the trend.

Following criminals is not a valid justification in front of a jury. Crime is a common occurrence, it does not make it not crime. Everybody is the same is just an excuse for criminals to not feel guilty about their acts.

In many parts of the world that goes against labor laws. You cannot harass or ostracize someone to make them leave. That is not just a toxic environment but way worse as there is intent to make the employee leave.

For me the first version of photo editing happened in Russia. Enemies of Stalin were erased from photos and from Russian history.

Copy pasting images is kind of different. Photocopies have been part of the comic book trade way before using computers. I see these techniques closer to it.

- https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/the-photo-book...

I recognize that I did not read the article. Nor I will. Elon was funny for a while, but to give attention to all his tantrums makes the web a worse place.

- https://news.bitcoin.com/elon-musk-dogecoin-accepted-teslas-...

That makes a lot of sense. And it is not just about simplifying, it is also the general disdain against taxes that facilitates tax breaks for the rich.

That sounds way less awesome, when you consider it only had 256 colors, so allmost all content did indeed loose a lot, by converting to gif.

Nonlossy can be used for pixel perfect animations, lossy formats cannot.

Because file size matters usually much more, than pixel perfect animation.

It depends. For video, that is true. For user interface, any glitch is distracting. Using JPEG for user interface images like buttons is in most cases a bad idea. Each format is useful in different situations.

I wanted to convert a short screencast to a gif, result: hundreds of megabyte big monster, with crappy quality.

You are right, that is not a use case for GIF or equivalent formats.

People do what they see others doing, people buy what they see others buying, and what it is available in the supermarket.

If in 20 years it becomes difficult sand expensive to buy meat, would most people still center their diet around it?

Chicken and pork are way cheaper that plant-based alternatives. People cooking at home know many more receipts with meat that otherwise.

Societies have inertia. Good policies can move people, bad ones may delay change for decades.

In Sweden there are many vegetarians, most restaurants have vegetarian options as they do not want to miss a group of 5 because one person cannot find anything to eat. That makes it easier to go meat free, or at least reduce your meat consumption. Go to Japan, and even many vegetarians give up as restaurants make your life impossible if you want to avoid meat.

This is a common problem with statistics. Ask someone to answer "if Saturday has 25% of rain and Sunday another 25% what is the probability of rain during the weekend?" The intuitive, but wrong, answer is to add probabilities capping them at 100%. So, this mental model seems quite natural for humans.

Japan? Japan is currently closed to the world, and it had a history of doing so.

So, I share your desire. I do not expect it to happen, thou.

Fainting works in reverse for me. Everything becomes harder to understand, sound becomes muffled like in low motion, vision starts to fade until you are in total darkness. And it's not similar at all to fall asleep, it's quite scary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflex_syncope

Microtransactions do not fit well with some kinds of mods as it could enable players to access new content not in the company control.

Mods are great for players and the most dedicated fans, thou.

Or not. Short term bonuses are key, achieving quarter goals is extremely important, that the company crashes and burns in 10 years may be someone else problem.

Big corporations are giants with clay feet. From inside one can see the real humans behind the curtains.

So, you could be right and its a long term strategy, but it's also possible that they are just thinking about their next bonus.

many of whom choose Apple for the very reason this is trying to negate

I already use apps in iOs that bypass the store to transfer money, pay for train tickets, parking, etc. Many people in Sweden likes Swish and probably will be ok with being able to choose it for all their transactions.

I could be wrong, but I don't think that there is data to support the opposite either.

That is just a Archimedes' screw. Well known way before DaVinci.

It's cool that DaVinci got to the conclusion that if moves water it can move air, thou.

There original design used materials from the time, but with an enough powerful engine you can probably make it fly.

And someone has added imaginary places like Finland, as a joke.

I'm totally going to cyberstalk this guy to see where he goes.

That is a felony in many places in the world. Companies do this kind of harassing, thou. That is one of the reasons that companies need to be taxed way more and use that money to assure that people that lose their jobs can still live a decent life.

There only way citizens well have freedom of speech is if they are not at the mercy of corporations.

"After years of ridicule and harsh press coverage, Amazon has finally disbanded its Twitter army. Part of a perplexing guerrilla PR campaign, the Amazon FC Ambassadors were a group of Twitter accounts belonging to employees who were paid to respond to posts criticizing the company." https://slate.com/technology/2022/01/amazon-fc-ambassadors-t...

- https://www.google.com/search?q=amazon+ambassadors

no one's challenged it so presumably it's true

Amazon is well known for training employees to defend the company on-line. Aren't you being too generous with an anonymous comment that you provide no link to? Is not possible that is just Amazon propaganda?

So, if Amazon employees work 4 days instead of 5 Bezos' yacht would be smaller and fit under that bridge? That seems a good solution that the Dutch did not take into account.

FakeFakeFakeDataStoreThatLosesAllYourData

So it is fake, so that means that it does Not lose all your data. Did I got that right?

I will just use it as a temporal solution and remember to change it later.